To mark the announcement, the UIAA spoke to Hélène Constanty, FFCAM’s Vice President, Environment and Jean Miczka, UIAA Management Board Continental Representative for Europe and FFCAM Board Member.
UIAA: What benefits do you hope winning the 2025 UIAA Mountain Protection Award will bring to your project?
FFCAM: Winning the 2025 UIAA Mountain Protection Award will provide essential visibility and recognition, both at national and international levels. This visibility will help us inspire and motivate the network of volunteers and clubs involved on the ground, giving new momentum to deploy even further programmes. We hope as well to inspire other federations to make huts as a base camp for environmental education.
The €8000 in prize money will also make a real difference financially. As the project is mostly run on a voluntary basis, this funding would help us professionalise and accelerate its deployment. It would, in fact, double our annual operational budget dedicated to this mission, allowing us to reach more huts and strengthen our environmental education work.
What did you hope to achieve when nominating your project for the 2025 UIAA Mountain Protection Award?
By nominating our project, we hoped to gain recognition for a long-term collective effort, one that has been carried forward by many volunteers and FFCAM staff. The nomination itself already feels like a reward for the strong commitment and passion of everyone involved. Winning the award has further validated this work and helps us consolidate the project for the future.
What have been the biggest challenges you have faced so far in the creation of your project?
The first challenge was to build a viable programme from scratch, within a club structure mainly relying on volunteers and young civic service participants. Developing communication and educational tools on environmental issues required a great deal of time and energy.
In the first phase, the project depended heavily on the physical presence of volunteers in huts to facilitate activities, which was inspiring, but very demanding. Recruiting and training enough people for these tasks, as well as securing financial resources to support them, were significant hurdles.
The second challenge came once the program was established: ensuring its diffusion among our network of 120 huts and local clubs. The FFCAM is a decentralized organization, which makes internal communication and adoption slower. This is precisely where international visibility, like that offered by the UIAA Award, could play a major role in helping the project grow within our network.
Have you already noticed behavioural changes in visitors attending the FFCAM huts that have been full adopters of your educational programmes? What have these changes been?
Yes, several encouraging changes have been observed. For example, at the Refuge des Lacs de Vens, which implemented the programme this year, the hut warden presents the environmental tools each evening before dinner. Visitors have responded positively — some spontaneously offered to take waste back down to the valley.
Therefore, the warden organized a system where light, compacted waste (like cans) is collected in 1kg bags that visitors can easily carry down. Over one summer season, nearly 900kg of waste were taken down this way, the equivalent of one less helicopter rotation at the end of the season. This illustrates a concrete and measurable change in visitor behaviour. Beyond these examples, we also observe that visitors increasingly understand themselves as actors of the ecological transition rather than simple guests. Many now take initiative — for instance, managing their waste, using water more sparingly, or engaging in discussions with wardens about the functioning of the hut. These individual actions, when multiplied, create a genuine collective dynamic of responsibility in the mountain environment.
How will you monitor the progress of the project and what will constitute a success? How long will it take for the project to be rolled out across all FFCAM huts?
The project is not intended to be implemented in every single FFCAM hut, but rather in those that are more accessible and frequently visited by non-experts who may be less familiar with hut culture and environmental constraints.
Each year, we dedicate a specific budget to deploy the program in two or three new huts. With additional funding, for instance from the UIAA Award, we could double this rate and reach five new huts per year. That would be a clear measure of success for us, along with the growing engagement of wardens and visitors.
In addition to making people more conscious mountain users and hut visitors, is FFCAM also working on making long-term changes to the structure and services of its huts and is this educational project linked to the evolution of making huts themselves more sustainable operations (such as choices in terms of energy consumption and other hut rules)?
Yes. For decades, FFCAM has been committed to reducing the environmental impact of its huts, through innovations in energy efficiency, waste reduction, and water management. Many huts have already undergone ecological transitions, although progress remains uneven. This transition involves substantial investments. The average cost of a complete renovation in high altitude conditions ranges between €1 and €3 million, sometimes up to €4 million for large or technically complex sites. These figures illustrate both the ambition and the financial challenge of the transformation we have undertaken.
Paul Kwakkenbos, UIAA Mountain Protection Commission President; Jean Miczka, FFCAM & UIAA Management Board and Charles Van der Elst, FFCAM President at the GA Ceremony in Peja. Photo credit: UIAA/Tom Tushaw
The main challenge is financial: huts revenues alone do not cover the high cost of infrastructure upgrades. Public funding therefore remains essential to support these transitions. The Refuges phares pour l’environnement project complements this effort by addressing the social and behavioural dimensions of sustainability, helping visitors understand and participate in the huts’ ecological transformation. The educational dimension complements this structural transition: it brings meaning and continuity to these investments by helping visitors understand how every gesture — water use, waste sorting, energy saving — contributes to the same collective goal. Together, the technical and educational transitions form the core of FFCAM’s long-term environmental strategy for huts.
What inspired the project, and what were the biggest challenges huts in France were facing in terms of the impact visitors were creating?
The project was inspired by a volunteer and teacher who wanted better tools to communicate with school groups and youth camps about environmental issues in the mountains. The idea was to make huts real educational gateways to mountain ecology and sustainability.
Hut wardens also strongly supported the project. They often face recurring questions from visitors, such as “Why is there no bin?” or “Why can’t I recharge my phone?” The programme provides them with clear, positive communication tools to explain how huts function and why certain constraints exist.
In this way, the project helps transform everyday environmental challenges into opportunities for awareness and dialogue between wardens and visitors.
Beyond its practical objectives, the project is also rooted in the cultural and ethical values of alpinism — simplicity, respect, and solidarity. These values were recognized by UNESCO in the inscription of alpinism on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In this sense, the huts are not only shelters but also places of transmission, where generations of mountaineers, families, and young people discover a way of living in harmony with the mountain environment. The project therefore carries both an ecological and a social mission, strengthening intergenerational links and keeping alive the spirit of the mountain.
Many other Alpine federations, such as the SAC in Switzerland and DAV in Germany have had to invest heavily in hut repair/maintenance and even relocating due to climate change. How significant an impact has climate change had in France in terms of the number of huts lost or needing repair and the financial impact on the federation and other institutions itself?
Climate change has already had a major impact on mountain huts in France, requiring significant financial investment from FFCAM and public partners. The most emblematic case is the permanent closure of the Refuge de la Pilatte, which had to be abandoned due to glacier retreat and resulting terrain instability. Several other huts have been temporarily closed or required major renovation work to adapt to new environmental conditions.
According to a recent study published in Via Tourism Review (link to article) — in which FFCAM was directly involved — nearly half of the French Alpine huts are now affected by the consequences of climate change, including access difficulties, water shortages, infrastructure instability, and a decrease in mountaineering activities. These changes have led to higher maintenance and safety costs, logistical challenges for supply, and, in some cases, the need to relocate or completely rebuild huts.
In addition, climate change has indirect financial consequences. In the Écrins massif, for example, the Vénéon valley — where FFCAM manages five huts — experienced a full season of closure followed by only a partial reopening the next year. Across these huts, overnight stays have dropped by more than 60%. This loss of revenue further limits our capacity to fund the necessary adaptations to ensure both safety and environmental transition.
In addition to the closure of La Pilatte and the difficulties in the Vénéon valley, two more sites have had to cease all visitor reception due to climate-related disasters: the Refuge du Châtelleret, which has not welcomed guests since a major debris flow in June 2023; and the Chalet alpin de la Bérarde, which has been left unused since June 2024, when the village of La Bérarde was devastated. Although the chalet — located upstream on the river’s left bank — was spared, the surrounding area has been declared a disaster zone, making any hosting activity impossible for the foreseeable future.
In all three cases — La Pilatte, Châtelleret, and Bérarde — climate change has not only disrupted infrastructure, it has led to the total suspension of access and overnight stays. These closures strike at the heart of our mission: to offer shelter and access to the high mountains for all. They also compromise the financial sustainability of the network.
Overall, the combination of rising maintenance costs and declining income due to climate-related disruptions poses a critical financial challenge. It underscores the need for stronger public support and innovative strategies to adapt mountain huts to a rapidly changing alpine environment. The Refuges phares pour l’environnement programme represents one of these small-scale, low-tech, yet impactful solutions — fostering awareness, resilience, and positive change among both visitors and hut managers.
Further Reading
About Flagship Shelters for the Environment
Project website
2025 MPA Nominee Showcase
Past MPA Winners
2023, Gear Tips, Brazil
2022, Asociación 7a Escalada, Peru
2020-21 Fondation Gran Paradis, Italy
2019, AlpineLearning Project Weeks, Switzerland
2018, Community Action Nepal, UK
2017, Mount Everest Biogas Project, USA
2016, Mountain Wilderness, France
2015, KTK-BELT Studio, Nepal
2014, Pamir Horse Adventure, Tajikistan
2013, Menz-Guassa Community Conservation Area, Ethiopia